On Wednesday, Camden County officials announced they'd filed suit against pharmaceutical manufacturers, marketers and retailers who they said helped fuel an addiction epidemic that kills as many as 100 people every day in the U.S.

Freeholder Director Lou Cappelli Jr. and Gloucester Township Mayor Dave Mayer talked about the economic and social impact of the epidemic. Cappelli said pharmaceutical executives are "no different than a drug cartel, no different than the drug pushers on our streets."

"The human cost is incalculable," said Mayer.

And for some public servants, that cost is all too personal.

Two brothers

Bill Moen and his brother Josh led "a very similar life," growing up just one year apart in age, playing sports and going to Triton Regional High School.

Bill, now a Camden County freeholder, played football, while his younger brother favored skateboarding and riding BMX bikes — pursuits that led to broken bones and other injuries.

On his first day of 5th grade, Josh got hurt in a bike accident. His doctor prescribed Percocets. That same school year, he had his tonsils removed. He was given another prescription for a liquid medication that included codeine.

By the end of the 5th grade, Josh Moen had been prescribed painkillers three separate times.

"I got hurt quite often," he recalled. "And taking pills for it never seemed like a big deal to me."

He excelled in school and shied away from the kids who smoked marijuana.

"But I would take pills at parties in high school, because it seemed so normal to me," recalled Josh Moen, who's been in recovery since 2012.

Pills got pricier, though.

Bill Moen said his family didn't realize anything was amiss — until things went missing.

"I first noticed when I would see little things, like a little bit of money here and there or a piece of jewelry or something, was gone," he remembered.

"When you're actively using, common sense and morals just aren't there," Josh Moen said. "You just think, I need this to live. You're in survival mode, where nothing else matters except getting what you need.

"You don't feel badly until you get clean and you realize what you did."

As Bill was working during the day and attending graduate school at night at the University of Pennsylvania, his brother was tumbling further into addiction, he remembered.

"I would come home from Penn, and my mom would tell me, 'Your brother is gone, we can't find him.' So I'd go with her to all these little motels. I'd kick in doors to get to him."

The family compelled him to go to rehab, Josh Moen said. He relapsed again and again.

The two brothers' divergent paths would come together in 2012 in Camden, forcing Josh into a reckoning.

A police officer stopped him in North Camden, the second time that officer had seen him trying to buy drugs in two days. As Josh sat in his car, his brother, coming from coaching a North Camden Little League team, saw him and approached.

The police officers asked Bill who he was and when he answered that the man they'd pulled over was his brother, an officer told him, "This isn't the first time we've caught him this week."

It was a Tuesday, Bill Moen said. Making matters worse, the family thought that Josh was getting clean.

"He told me that, whatever they did to my brother, I would be the one who'd have more of an impact. So I took out my phone and took a picture of him there with the police and texted it to my mom. I said, 'If you think he's clean...'"

Josh got off with a traffic violation. The police officer told him he was going to face enough trouble with his family.

"Every other time I'd gone to rehab, I was forced into it," Josh Moen remembered. "This time, I called my union and said, 'If I don't get help now, I'm going to die.'"

'We've got to talk about this'

"I was provided with everything by my parents," said the Camden County deputy administrator. "I had a lot that many kids didn't."

Still, his family has been touched by addiction, with one person in long-term recovery and another lost to an overdose.

The latter "devastated us," said Vesper, who, like Moen, is a member of the Camden County Addiction Awareness Task Force.

"Everything we've done since then is to try to find something positive out of what our family has gone through," he said. "We use this as a tool to educate our children."

Vesper's son is a sophomore at La Salle University. A communications major, he studies the opiate epidemic. "He has access to the facts and the statistics," Vesper said. "But for him, it all goes back to these two family members."

And while Vesper said he's proud of his entire family, he reserves a special pride for his loved one who is in long-term recovery, who's "accomplished something a lot of people, unfortunately, have not been able to do."

"We've got to talk about this," he said. "We've got to break the stigma so we can help people."

'An all-American boy'

Beth Borchers pointed to a name on the purple backdrop outside the Camden County Hall of Justice on Wednesday: Nicholas Monroe.

Monroe died at just 23, leaving behind family in Florida and Haddon Heights. He was Borchers' nephew and godson, someone she described as "a wonderful kid ... tall, blond, handsome, athletic, an all-American boy."

But he struggled with depression, and self-medicated to feel better, Borchers said. He'd fought addiction for years, she recalled, living at times with her family in Haddon Heights.

He was waiting for an in-patient treatment bed to open in Florida, she said, when he had "one bad day."

His death shocked his family, but Borchers said she didn't want her beloved nephew to be remembered for the way he died.

"These are normal kids; addiction is only one part of who they are. There is so much more to them than their disease," she said.

Once a real estate agent, she switched careers. "I wanted to do something more service-oriented," she said. Now working for the county health department, she said being part of the addiction task force has been "very healing for me and my family."

Monroe's remains were brought to South Jersey for interment, she remembered, and a tree grows in her yard in his memory.

20-plus saves and counting

Camden County Police Officer Tyrrell Bagby was a cop for all of three days when he witnessed his first overdose.

"It was pouring rain," he remembered. County officers weren't yet carrying naloxone (they have since 2014) and he didn't have the overdose antidote on him, though he had been trained to use it while in the academy.

"She was just lying there, not moving, face-up. Her skin was blue, her lips were purple." He was with a more experienced officer who administered naloxone.

"It seemed like the 20 seconds it took for him to deploy it took 20 minutes," recalled Bagby. "And it gets worse: She was pregnant."

As Bagby patrolled city streets from North Camden, through the downtown corridor and into South Camden, he's become all too familiar with overdoses. He estimates he's saved at least 22 people, and perhaps as many as 27.

"Time slows down," he said. "It's like in the movies." But the officer doesn't have the luxury of time — with each passing moment, the brain is more deprived of oxygen, the body slips closer to death.

He's become more adept, and hasn't lost anyone yet. But every call is a close call.

"The last time was about two weeks ago in South Camden," he said. The victim was in an abandoned, burned-out garage.

CLOSE

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration posted a video explaining the dangers of fentanyl exposure for law enforcement.
DEA

"It was icy out, and it took a lot of time for me to get out there. I fell, I kept sliding." He worried he was too late, that the cold and the amount of time that had passed between his deploying the antidote and the EMTs' arrival was too much for the person to bear. Naloxone only delays the effects of an overdose, buying time for further medical intervention.

Eventually, the person was able to walk to a waiting ambulance.

Bagby has been called to homes by family members who discover a loved one blue and unresponsive, or bloodied from the fall they took when they overdosed. He's seen children who bear witness to overdoses by their parents.

"It's heartbreaking, because it doesn't just affect the person overdosing," he said. "It's the whole family, and people don't see that whole effect."

A second-generation police officer, Bagby once hoped to go into medicine, but realized law enforcement was a better fit for him. He keeps an open dialogue with the people he encounters on his patrols, and that helps him maintain a sense of compassion.

"Seeing the people I see on the street using, how it hurts them and hurts their families, I know they have a disease," he said. "None of them want to do this. They can't stop. They're miserable doing this."

He's gotten thank-you letters from people for saving their loved ones.

"If I save their life, even for a little while, it's a win for me, for them, for their families."

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Patty DiRenzo, who lost her son to addiction, shares her story as freeholders file a lawsuit to battle opioid epidemic naming manufacturers Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2018 at the Camden County Hall of Justice in Camden, N.J.(Photo: Joe Lamberti/Courier Post)

The advocate

Patty DiRenzo's story is a familiar one to many in South Jersey, but no less tragic despite the passage of time.

Her son, Salvatore Marchese, died of a heroin overdose in North Camden in 2010. He'd relapsed, DiRenzo believes, after getting a prescription for painkillers from a dentist.

Since his death, she's been a tireless advocate for addiction services, awareness and the Overdose Prevention Act, which enables people to report an overdose to authorities without fear of prosecution.

She spoke Wednesday of the collateral damage from the opioid and heroin epidemic — and the need for someone to answer for that.

"There needs to be compensation," she said. "Compensation for the police who carry Narcan. Compensation for treatment. Compensation for funerals, and support for grandparents who are raising their grandkids because the parents are gone.

"Every day, we are dealing with the effects of this," she added. "We are paying for this with our loved ones' lives."